Reading tips

Here are some tips to help pace yourself:

1. Take a quick look through the book and see how many pages you have to read.
2. Check a calendar and see how many days or weeks you have to complete the reading.
3. Divide the number of pages by the number of days/weeks to calculate how many pages you should read per day/week (at least).
   example: you have a 250 page book to read and eight weeks to read it in. That would mean you should try to read at least 31 - 32 pages per week, a mere 5 or so pages per day (giving you one extra day should you fall behind).
4. Go through the book and mark on the pages your goal for each day's/week's reading. Use a pencil or sticky note and indicate the day you plan to read each section marked. As you do this, pay attention to the format of the book. Do not break your reading in the middle of a paragraph. If you need to add (or subtract) a page or so to maintain the flow of ideas as you read, then do so. Use the book's own section headings as good break points.
5. Keep your book by your bedside or wherever your favorite reading place may be. Schedule a time for each day's reading (my preferred time is when I wake up early or as bedtime reading). You may prefer to schedule one time per week to read the entire week's scheduled portion or you may want to break the reading down even further to more manageable (smaller) sections and read a bit each day.
6. If you fall behind, try to catch up as soon as possible by reading two sections per day/week until you catch up.
7. If you have some extra time on any given day, then try to read ahead, just to give you room for future times when you may fall behind.

Now for some tips so that you actually absorb what you are reading (this can be the journaling you do):

1. Highlight or underline main points. Star (*) some of the most important points.
2. Take notes as you read! Not on everything, just on the main points and on anything else you feel to be important or personally interesting or useful. However, if you are borrowing this book and will not have it available in the future, you might want to write a more complete outline as you read through each section.
3. Jot down significant quotes (indicate page numbers so you can return to or reference these if and when you may need to)
4. At the end of each section/chapter, write in your own words, your own summary of the content - just a few sentences to a paragraph depending on how lengthy the section was ("this chapter is about...").
5. As you do take notes, be sure to indicate (with quotes or otherwise and page numbers) material actually taken from the book in contrast to your own paraphrase or summary words. You may know the difference when you are writing but later, when you review what you've written, you will not likely recall what came from the book and what was your own commentary.
6. Part of what you write will be based on the content of the book (as noted above). But you may also care to write your own commentary: a critique of or dialogue with the author (his or her writing style, theories or facts presented, how he or she analyzes the information presented, etc.), how you see the content relating to the real world or to your own life, questions you may have that arise from something the author has written but not sufficiently addressed for you (then speculate on your own answers to these questions, look for answers as you continue to read, or try to find the answers in other material).

(As a graduate student with lots of assigned reading, this is how I managed to handle the workload.)